Properties of a planar wire arrays Z-pinch source and comparisons with cylindrical arrays

Planar wire array plasmas created by a 1 MA current discharge provide a novel method to investigate dense plasma dynamics, heating mechanism and radiation properties. This is a strongly inhomogeneous on small scale plasma, which has high resistivity with density and magnetic field dependence. The planar array dynamics leads to generation of a plasma with a chain of hot spots in a dense, high-opacity column. The single planar array consists of a number of wires with inter-wire separation of ≤1 mm in a linear row. It has been shown that a strongly inhomogeneous on small scale planar wire array plasma can radiate much more energy than the kinetic energy of imploding plasma. The results of recent experiments on scaling of radiation yields and powers with array masses, materials, inter-wire gaps and array width at 1 MA, 1.5 TW power Z-pinch Zebra generator at University of Nevada at Reno are presented. Radiation properties of planar arrays were compared with low-number cylindrical arrays and compact cylindrical array loads. Data on the generation of the hot spots during implosion of planar array plasma and its impact on the radiation pulse are reported.